CHICAGO (AP) – Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump’s pledge to promote in vitro fertilization by forcing health insurance companies or the federal government to pay for the treatments is at odds with his own party’s actions.
Still, his surprise announcement Thursday reveals the former president’s realization that the GOP’s positions on abortion and reproductive rights could be a huge liability to his chances of returning to the White House. Trump has been quick to try to shape a narrative around these issues since Vice President Kamala Harris kicked off the presidential race.
Even before he made his coverage proposal, Trump had promoted the idea that the Republican Party is the “leader” of IVF. Democrats reject that characterization, seizing on universal but expensive fertility treatment as another dimension of reproductive rights threatened by Republicans and a second Trump presidency.
It’s not just about political parties.
“Republicans are not leaders in IVF,” said Katie Watson, a professor of medical ethics at Northwestern’s Feinberg School of Medicine. “Some of them have threatened IVF, and they’re trying to figure out how to be anti-abortion and pro-IVF, and they have internal inconsistencies and struggles. It looks like Republicans are trying to repair the political damage that came from their of their own choices.
Trump’s proposal, which he announced without providing details, illustrates how reproductive rights have become central to this year’s presidential election. It’s also the latest example of the former president trying to appear moderate on the issue, even as he repeatedly brags about appointing three Supreme Court justices who helped overturn the constitutional right to abortion.
While the Republican Party has tried to create a national narrative that it is receptive to in vitro fertilization, many Republicans have been left grappling with the inherent tension between supporting the procedure and laws passed by their own party that give legal personality not only to fetuses but to all embryos that are destroyed in the IVF process.
Communication efforts have also been undermined by state legislatures, Republican-controlled courts and anti-abortionists across party lines, and opposition to legislative efforts to protect IVF use.
Ahead of the Republican National Convention in July, the Republican Party adopted a policy platform that supports states establishing fetal personhood through the 14th Amendment to the Constitution, which guarantees all American citizens equal legal protection. The platform also encourages support for IVF, but does not explain how the party plans to do so, while encouraging fetal personhood laws that would make the treatment illegal.
In May, the Texas Republican Primary Committee roundly rejected a proposal to classify IVF-created embryos as “human” and to destroy them as “murder.” A bill aimed at expanding IVF use sailed through California on Thursday despite opposition from nearly all Republican lawmakers.
Sen. Tammy Duckworth, a Democrat from Illinois who shared her own IVF journey on the Senate floor and supported the care protection bill, blasted Republicans for saying they support IVF on the campaign trail but not with their votes.
He added that Supreme Court justices appointed by Trump “paved the way” for the overturning of Roe v. Wade and the impact on reproductive rights, including access to IVF.
“For Republicans to publicly say they support IVF is absurd,” he told the AP.
The case exploded onto the national political landscape in February after the all-Republican Alabama Supreme Court upheld the frozen embryo’s legal rights as children. That decision forced Alabama clinics to suspend their IVF treatments, devastating patients struggling to become parents. Soon after, and in the face of a national backlash, Alabama’s Republican governor signed a law shielding doctors from legal liability to allow IVF procedures to continue.
In the weeks following the Alabama verdict, congressional Republicans began to address IVF. Many rushed to create a unified message of support despite a history of voting for fetal personhood laws and arguing that life begins at conception, the same notion that underpinned the Alabama decision.
“The reality is you can’t protect IVF and the personhood of the master fetus — they’re fundamentally incompatible — and the American people won’t be fooled by another lie from Donald Trump,” Sen. Patty Murray, a Democrat and right-wing supporter. to the IVF bill, reported the Associated Press.
Republican Sens. Katie Britt and Ted Cruz introduced a bill this year that would bar states from receiving Medicaid funding if they ban the procedure. But that came after Senate Republicans blocked legislation that would have made IVF a federal right. All Republicans except Sens. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Susan Collins of Maine voted against the measure.
“It’s not easy for a Republican legislature to say they support IVF and mean it in a straightforward and concrete way without angering many constituents,” said Mary Ruth Ziegler, a professor at the University of California, Davis School of Law. law.
A June AP-NORC poll found that more than six in 10 US adults support making IVF safe, including more than half of Republicans, and only about one in 10 oppose it. But many anti-abortion groups and some lawmakers oppose the treatment, including several members of the right-wing Freedom Caucus, which has opposed expanding IVF access to veterans.
According to the Guttmacher Institute, a research group that supports abortion rights, at least 23 bills have so far been introduced in 13 states to affirm the personhood of a fetus.
This type of legislation, all proposed by Republican lawmakers, is based on the idea that life begins at conception and could jeopardize fertility treatments that involve storing, transporting and destroying embryos.
Still, many GOP lawmakers have voiced their support for IVF. The issue is personal for Wisconsin Republican Sen. Ron Johnson, who shared his daughter’s IVF experience. But while Johnson said he fully supports IVF, he wasn’t completely sold on Trump’s proposal because of its potential price tag. Other Republican lawmakers who responded publicly after Trump’s announcement expressed similar concerns.
“I would need to see the cost estimates, the impact on premiums, etc., before I make any decisions or commitments to support the proposals,” Johnson said.
Republican lawmakers have historically opposed federal funding for health coverage, including repeatedly trying to repeal the Obama-era Affordable Care Act, and are unlikely to support similar plans, including IVF.
The lack of health insurance for fertility treatments has been a major obstacle for those who want to start or continue treatments. Although coverage has expanded in recent years, less than half of employers with at least 500 employees in the U.S. offered IVF coverage in 2023, according to benefits consultant Mercer.
California Republican Rep. Michelle Steel has come under fire for supporting a GOP bill aimed at giving constitutional protections to embryos at the “moment of conception” after she publicly shared her own experience with IVF. Steel withdrew his co-sponsorship of the measure in March, two days after winning the primary, saying he did not support federal restrictions on IVF.
In a statement to the AP, he said Congress “must pass policies to support and expand IVF treatments.”
Such Republican shenanigans only provide fodder for Democrats who say Trump and his party cannot be trusted to protect reproductive rights.
Representative Elissa Slotkin, the Democratic candidate for the US Senate in Michigan, warned voters to “watch what they do, not what they say.”
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Associated Press writers Scott Bauer in Madison, Wisconsin; Tom Murphy in Indianapolis and Amelia Thomson-DeVeaux in Washington contributed to this report.
